Disappointment crept into the boy’s dark eyes.
“Oh, please,” he pleaded. “I want you to have it, because you bound up my foot with healing herbs when I tore it on the brambles in the wood. Please take it.”
The girl answered with a smile that made her face very lovely, “Of course I shall take it, and I will keep it always because you gave it to me.” Reaching over, she took the fluttering creature from the big dark hands, and stroked it gently as it quivered at the strange touch. Then she made her way back to the castle over a carpet of fallen leaves, while Rupert the forester’s son hurried to the hunting lodge, happy in the thought that he had made a gift to her who had been kind to him.
“She will keep it and feed it and be glad I did not forget,” he thought as he fed the falcons that evening, while up in the castle court Willeswind was busy with her pet.
“See how glossy its feathers are!” she said as her brother Othmar came near. “Rupert gave it to me, and I promised to keep it always.”
The young squire laughed. “A raven is sure to be a bother,” he said. “Better let it fly into the woods.”
Willeswind shook her golden head. “No, no,” she exclaimed, “I like it. Your horses and hounds and falcons are far more bother than one raven, yet you would not think of being without them.”
Othmar mounted his horse and rode out to his archery practice, thinking how soon his sister would tire of the bird. But she did not tire of it. It was different from any pet she had ever owned, and she cared for it and trained it.
Seven years passed, and the brother had grown from a squire to a knight, and upon the death of his father the baron, became lord of the castle. Willeswind too had changed from the slender maid who stood under the November trees with Rupert the forester’s son. She was now the stateliest of all the great ladies on the Rhine. But her hair was still the color of sun-kissed straw, and her eyes the same sympathetic ones, as blue as wood gentians. Rupert was tall and stalwart, one of the sturdiest vassals of Castle Stolzenfels, and although Willeswind seldom saw him, she remembered him kindly because he had given her the pet raven which she still kept and loved. She spent many hours teaching it tricks, and the bird was so clever that it learned rapidly. Sometimes it flew into the forest and came back with flowers and leaves for its mistress. Sometimes it winged its way across the river and brought sprigs of the sweet wild berries growing there.
Everything was bright about the castle, for the young master and mistress were kind to those who served them, and there were no happier vassals along the Rhine than theirs.